Training Summary: 2/24 - 3/2

Mon: AM – 4.5 miles; PM – 8.5 miles
Tue: AM – 4.5 miles; PM – 8.5 miles, including hill bursts
Wed: 9.5 miles, including turnover work
Thu: AM: 4.5 miles; PM – 7.5 miles
Fri: 10.5 miles
Sat: 7 miles
Sun: 15 miles
Total: 80 miles

This was week three of base-building, and it went well. I’m feeling better overall than I have in a long time, and I’m starting to see signs that fitness is building. I’m doing everyday runs at faster and faster paces yet my average heart rate for those runs continues to drop, so that tells me I’m making progress. I’m behind where I wanted to be at this point in the year, but I think things might come together nicely for a good spring race season. I just need to continue to get my legs under me then have this weather break so I can do some quality work, and I believe I’ll see some real improvement.

Moving on to the specifics of the week, after doubling on Monday and Tuesday, I did a little turnover work on Wednesday. It was nothing too serious, just 6X60 sec and 6X30 sec, all with 60 sec recovery. I didn’t set any speed records, but between that and the hill bursts the day before, I did what I needed to recruit some fast twitch fibers and start positioning myself for faster work to come. After a relatively easy day on Thursday, I had planned on running some 1k cruise intervals on the track on Friday, but for various reasons, with the weather being the primary one, I wound up just doing a medium long run. I sort of regretted not going through with the workout though, because even though it might have been nasty in the wind, I felt great during this run and believe I could have put in a solid effort. I concluded the week with an easy day on Saturday followed by a good long run on Sunday. The 15 miles I did were the longest I’ve gone in a while, and as I did last week, I decided to lean on it towards the end, resulting in a 5:53 last mile. That one really surprised me because 1) it felt more like 6:10 effort than sub-5:55, and 2) I didn’t think I was capable of running that fast at the end of 15 miles without really killing it. Overall it was an encouraging way to close out a good week of training.

I’m sort of playing this coming week by ear. I had planned on dropping back with my mileage and will likely stick to that plan. However, I’m feeling really good and haven’t been doing much quality to make the mileage all that stressful, so I might stay in the 75-80 range for one more week. Too many higher mileage weeks in a row has burned me in the past though, so I’ll see how I’m feeling after the first couple days and go from there. Regardless, I’m optimistic about how training is going and ready to do some work and see where it takes me.